Rep. Israel leaving DCCC

Following Democratic setbacks in the midterms, Rep. Steve Israel said he has turned down House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s appeal to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman for a third time.

The New York congressman will not run the party’s congressional campaign operations for the 2016 elections and is instead eyeing a spot in House Democratic leadership, Newsday reported Wednesday.

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“I’ve been really clear with Leader Pelosi that I would like to continue to have a seat at the leadership table, because it makes me more effective,” Israel said.

The congressman had a tall order in this year’s midterms, with Democrats on the defensive due to President Barack Obama’s low poll numbers and a long historical record of a president’s party losing large numbers of seats in second midterms. But the Democrats lost somewhere between 13 and 16 seats on Tuesday, a tough blow that will put the party deeper into the minority than it has been since 1929. And the Democrats lost some particularly embarrassing races, including one in Israel’s home state of New York, where indicted Republican Rep. Michael Grimm sailed to victory in his Staten Island district.

The Democrats did win eight seats in 2012, a presidential year, and Israel told Newsday that this year’s cycle “could have been a lot worse.”

“[A]s tough as tonight was, we did everything in our control to narrow the Republicans’ pickup opportunities and limit their chance to take advantage of the wave,” he said in a statement released after the midterms.

Israel offered something of a parting jab at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who, he suggested, could have done more to help Democrats running in New York. “We had conversations several months ago with the governor’s staff about helping to organize and coordinate a campaign and I didn’t see the fruition to those conversations,” he told The New York Times.